Application updating over a network is an effective way to keep an installed application on a network capable device up to date with a new release and/or fixes. A networked capable device can be a personal computer, a laptop, a net book, a mobile device, a music player, an electronic book enabled device and any device including a processor and memory that can receive and/or transmit data over a network. It would be beneficial for the application updating process to be able to send and receive update information to and from more than one wired or wireless network connections, in order to selectively and/or dynamically determine which network to use in case of network routing failure. When a user invokes an application on his/her network capable device with wired and wireless network connections, on a separated thread, an Update Process checks for new updates by connecting and sending a request to the vendor's server.
Once the Update Process connected to the Vendor's server, it sends the application's data to the server for validating and comparing with the data on the server. The application data can include the version number, the installed date and time, the application identifier, the networked capable device information like device id or hardware id, and any other data that can be used to validate and check for the newer version of application on the Vendor's server. The server sends a response back to the Application's Update Process to let it know whether an update is available to download. If an update is available, the Update Process asks the user for permission to download by notifying the user, either through a pop-up dialog window or on the application window. The notification can be right after the Update Process, received the response from the server, or until the user exits from the application. If there is not any update, the Update Process will terminate by itself.
If the user allows new update, the Update Process sends another request to the server to retrieve the new data. If the request to retrieve the new update failed to connect to the Vendor's server on the 1st network connection, the Update Process will send the request to the second network connection. If the user chooses not to update his/her application, then the Update Process terminates by itself until next time when the user invokes the application.